Yeah, but can my GPS guide me to the BEST restaurant?
When I’m on the road doing programs about GPS, and I talk about the great turn-by-turn routing programs like Garmin City Select
, I often tell people that it will tell you how to get to the nearest Vietnamese (or insert your favorite ethnic cuisine) restaurant, but it won’t tell you if it’s any good. That may be about to change with the announcement of a new NAVTEQ – Zagat partnership. NAVTEQ is one of two major providers of road data for GPS manufacturers (the other being TeleAtlas). Zagat, most famous for their restaurant reviews, also covers other travel categories such as hotels, nightlife, and attractions.
My only questions are delivery (is this information going to be available on my GPS or cell phone?), how much is it going to cost, and when can I get my hands on it?
Via GPS Review.
It is my understanding that the data will be available as an extension to the current data. By that I assume that you would need to purchase the “Zagat Extension” to the normal NAVTEQ data.
GPS vendors would likely need to update their software to accomadate the additional data (if they choose) and then they would sell the data as an add-on to the region data they purchased. Your guess is as good as mine regarding price.
Thanks for chiming in Tim. Yeah, I wonder if Garmin will have it as an add-on, or include it in products like City Select at no extra charge. It might entice more people to upgrade. Perhaps it will show up sooner in cell phones.